


Groceries and Gaurdians

by xompeii



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Bears, Cuddling, Gen, Kids, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Post-Canon, discussions of future, i go over a lot of things okay, post jack's return
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 19:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14961086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xompeii/pseuds/xompeii
Summary: Sammy and Jack buy groceries in King Falls and run into a beloved Mother and her two kids. Jack gets a gift and a good nights sleep. Jack remembers the night Sammy became his fiancé.





	Groceries and Gaurdians

Jack is awake on the couch when Sammy unlocks the front door. He’s been wide awake since 2 am. When Sammy’s voice came through on the radio. Jack has listened to the shows since he got back because he still can’t quite believe that this is what Sammy does now. It’s so different.

It’s easier to catch the show when Lily’s out of town. She makes fun of Sammy for the run of the show, and it’s distracting. Right now she’s back in LA working with her producers on the next season of her podcast. She’s been talking to Jack about moving back to LA. It’s where her home is, really, and Jack understands that. He knows that he can always go out there and visit her. Maybe out there he’d feel more normal.

King Falls isn’t a bad place. He remembers the research he started, but not exactly where it went. Somewhere between hearing the name of the town, and being pulled into that place he lost some time. He knows of Kingsie and Big John. He knows about the place in perdition woods, the place Sammy refuses to name. He’s aware of the online forum that said the Santa Claus lived here part-time (Sammy and Ben refused to comment on that). He knows that people have disappeared here before, that it’s the place some science cult chose to call home. He just doesn’t remember how all of that had once fit together. Now that he’s lived here though….

There are the two groups of men that disappear on full moons. There’s the short red-headed man with a temper who wears green an awful lot. There’s the vampire. Yes he’s a vampire and even Sammy agrees on that, so there’s definitely a vampire. Despite all that, Jack still felt like the oddity in town. He felt like he wasn’t supposed to be here, still.

It’s 6:34 am on the clock when Sammy opens the door. He’d stopped for coffee on the way home. He knows Jack is awake and he walks over to the couch to hand him his new usual. He doesn’t drink caffeine anymore, so he just gets tea. The lady who runs the one coffee shop in town always puts extra honey in it.

Jack reaches for the cup, letting his blanket fall from his shoulders as he drinks in the warmth. It cools down enough to drink between the coffee shop and the apartment. It’s still hot enough to make Jack stop shivering for a while.

Sammy is obviously tired, the callers still ask about Jack every morning. He rarely ventures alone into town, and most of the time, when people see him, they look too scared to even walk over to him. It’s a small group of people who treat him normally. Sammy, Lily, Ben, and Emily. Troy and Ron try.

“Morning,” Sammy mumbles as he walks off toward the kitchenette. He opens the fridge, Jack can’t see what he’s doing, but he obviously moves a few things around. He stands up with the milk, which has been shoved to the back of the fridge for a while now, sniffs it, and gags. “Ugh.”

“Bad?” Jack asks.

“When did we last get groceries?” Sammy asks. He moves to the sink and turns over the milk, letting it drain. He’s frowning.

It’s the same old post-show tired Sammy that Jack remembers. It’s almost scary to see him like this again. It reminds him of the other place, the other Sammy. He suppresses a shiver of fear and feels it travel down his spine.

Sammy looks over and sighs, “You want to go to Rose’s? I was going to make eggs, but we’re out of those, and milk.”

“Why don’t we just get groceries instead?” Jack offers, “I don’t want to be around people right now.” He pulls his tea a little bit closer and doesn’t look at Sammy. His thoughts are spinning and he’s trying not to think that the last 6 weeks have been a trick, because he really, really doesn’t want them to be.

Sammy is there. Soft, gentle, different again. He has his hands on Jacks knees and is rubbing circles on his legs, “Hey, you okay?”

Jack doesn’t realize he’s dropped his tea for a moment. It’s a too long gap in his thoughts that he doesn’t exactly like. It’s happened a few times before, and each time it’s either been Sammy or Lily there to pull him out. He hopes this never happens when they’re not with him. He doesn’t want to find out what happens if he’s in there too long.

“I’m-” Jack starts. It takes some time to figure out what he feels. He doesn’t want to just brush these things off. “Grumpy Sammy is familiar.”

It’s been hard having to explain to Sammy why he likes that everything has changed. Why the long hair doesn’t bother him, how they switched sides of the bed is a relief, or how even being able to wear the ring Sammy gave him, the one that got left on this side when he was there makes a world of difference even if they’re not married yet. The Shadowman was not creative. The Shadowman made a fake nightmarish Sammy from everything Jack had remembered, and that Sammy was different from the Sammy that sat across from him.

“I can’t help but be tired after the show,” Sammy said. He pulled Jack forward, into a hug, “Maybe there’s something I can do about it?”

“No.” Jack says firmly, “No I have to get used to it. You can’t just change everything for me, please don’t do that.”

Sammy nods. It’s a conversation they’re going to have again at some point. Maybe a fight if they’re not careful. Jack knows Sammy is going to try and not be grumpy after his show tomorrow morning, and he loves him for that. He just wishes that it wasn’t because Jack still had these episodes where he got lost in his head.

Sammy presses a kiss to his forehead, “I love you.”

Jack wished he could get the words out. He’d been able to before. When they’d been living in a house in the city. When Sammy had been almost too shy to even carpool to their studio together. He’d said it so often that Sammy had gone red every time. He knew how Sammy had felt back then now.

“I’ll get dressed for the store,” Jack says.

“I’ll clean this up.” Sammy moved to Let Jack up.

Jack walked into their shared bedroom, a mix of tidy and disorganized. Another reminder of how everything was so different. Sammy used to have everything sorted by color and size and level of formality in his closet. Now his clothes were thrown about the room, in piles of maybe-clean, dirty, and 3-week-old unfolded laundry. Clothes Jack had were folded neatly into the drawers of the dresser Sammy never seemed to use. Most of them had been passed off to Sammy at the station because they all knew Jack didn’t have much to call his own anymore.

He’d become all sharp angles and pointy elbows in the other place. A tiny version of his former self, so even the clothes that Sammy had put in storage in Seattle wouldn’t have helped him. Lily’s last trip out there for Pod-con had been 4 weeks ago, and she’d raided the storage locker for Jack’s clothes, sending it all to King falls. It all sat at the King Falls consignment shop, because he’d decided he wasn’t going to be able to be that Jack again.

He would settle for the seemingly oversized hoodie that came from Troy, and the jeans that had come from Tim. Neither of them fit quite right. He’d gone with Lily to get clothes, the whole event had been horrible because he just couldn’t find anything he wanted enough to overlook the fact that he was going to outgrow them in a few weeks. He’d already had to stop wearing Ben’s shirts. Though, the guy did like tight clothes, so maybe that was more of the issue. They’d left the store after jack had had a moment lost in his head, and Lily had called it right there.

He emerged from their shared bedroom, the dropped tea and all evidence of it was gone from the carpeted floor. Sammy was shoving damp paper towels into the trash. “Help me take these down to the dumpsters?” Sammy jerked his head over to the other two bags of trash that hadn’t been taken out yet.

They walked them down the stairs and out of the garage that was attached to their apartment. They weren’t heavy, but Jack still felt fatigued by the effort. He hated being so weak. He hated feeling like he was pathetic. This was one of the times Sammy didn’t step into help.

Sammy, bless him, did his best to let Jack do what he needed to without help, but there were a few moments when he stepped in to try and help, and Jack had been so upset by it he’d yelled. It was always the look of pure terror on Sammy’s face that made Jack feel bad later, and he would apologize. Sammy would try and brush it off.

Jack knew they needed to sit down and actually talk. They needed to just acknowledge whatever was throwing things off for them. They needed to talk about it. They needed to stop being so stupid and just fix it.

Sammy drives them both back into town. The only grocery store with fresh produce in town it the Stater Brothers, when they get there at 7:15 the parking lot is mostly empty. Jack Catches Sammy looking over to a beat-up blue minivan with those stickers on the back that happily announce how big the family is. Except, there’s a little ufo over the dad-figure. There’s also a bumper sticker that reads “Wreak Robots” and Jack is torn between wondering if it’s a King Falls-ism or a band. He really hopes it’s a band because the car is telling a wild story, he thinks, even for King Falls.

When they get inside, Jack stays a foot away from Sammy as he walks down each aisle out of habit. It occurs to Jack that Sammy might be navigating through the entire store like this because Jack hasn’t actually been to this grocery store before. They’d always go to Trader Joe’s in Seattle. Sammy also pulls food from the shelf if Jack stares at it for too long.

“You don’t have to get it just because I was looking,” Jack mumbles, dragging his feet as they get to the frozen foods aisle.

“You barely eat what we have.” Sammy says, “If something interests you, I’m getting it. If you don’t eat it, Ben will.”

It’s another thing Jack is surprised by. Ben. The kid, if you could even call him that, will eat like a mammoth and still retain the size and shape of a 7th grader. He could grow a beard, Jack saw him shaving when he spent the night there with Emily the first time Lily was out of town for the night. Ben was only a few years younger than Sammy and Jack. You’d only need one hand to count the difference. Sammy loves the kid. They are brothers, there is no ‘practically’ in that statement because that’s just how the two of them are. Sammy hadn’t had a friendship like that before he’d met Jack, and even when their friendship had resembled the one Sammy now had with Ben, it had always had that undercurrent of longing that neither of them wanted to address.

Ben was a huge difference, probably one of the main reasons Jack was on this side at the moment. He had no boundaries, no filter, and was the only choice for Sammy’s grooms-mate(they’d all agreed that it would have to work as a gender-neutral title for the wedding). Give it another few weeks and Jack might have to have him officiate. You couldn’t hate the kid.

Sammy grabs a box of frozen breakfast sandwiches that would have he would have mocked mercilessly before and tosses them in the cart. “Easier to just heat them up before driving up the mountain,” Sammy says like Jack needed an explanation. “Ice cream?”

Jack shrugs as they get to the wall of store-brand options. They’re getting closer to summer. Sammy’s birthday is coming up. It’s hot in the apartment that was built before global warming was a problem. Jack pulls out a tub of vanilla and throws it in the cart. It’s better to start from scratch than picking something he’ll hate for weeks instead of days.

They head down the next aisle, with all the cereals. Sammy stops to debate over cheerios or froot loops. Jack is about to grab the Cheerios and just throw them in the cart when there’s a shout from the end of the aisle.

“Uncle Sammy!” It’s two kids in unison, followed by a bleary-eyed mother. One of the kids, the daughter who’s carrying a teddy bear, sprints toward them and Sammy flings both boxes of cereals into the cart before scooping up the girl into a hug.

Jack hopes he doesn’t look too shocked. Sammy is giggling and spinning because the momentum at which this small girl launched herself at him was too fast for him to simply catch her without stopping. “Bella!” Sammy laughs, “How are you?”

“M’great!” She smiles up at Sammy, “I just lost another tooth!” She opens up her mouth to show off where one of her teeth has fallen out and another is coming down to replace it.

“Bella.” The exasperated mother says, her voice drawling slightly, “I told you that you can’t just go running off like that.” The woman turns to Jack, “Sorry abou-”

Jack tensed because he knew this would probably happen. If anyone saw the two of them together, so long as they were listeners to The Sammy and Ben Show (and most townies were), it happened.

The woman pulled him into a tight hug and didn’t let go for a long time. Her daughter just giggled at the sight, “Oh it’s so good to have you back, son.”

Jack hasn’t been called ‘son’ in longer than he can remember.

“Mary?” Sammy puts his hand on her shoulder, and she finally pulls back. He’s still holding Bella in his arms. He shifts a little, pulling Bella up so she can sit more comfortably against his hip.

“I’ll tell you.” She wipes away tears from her eyes, “We were all pulling for him to get you back. I hope you start to feel better, call into the damn show sometime and introduce yourself. Everyone in town is dying to hear from you.”

“I-” Jack doesn’t exactly know what to say to her. “How do you know Sammy?”

Mary smiles, “He helped me out after my husband, Tim, got abducted by the rainbow lights.”

“Uncle Sammy came over to watch Andy and I.” The little girl smiled, “Hey Mr. Jack, take this.” She held out her teddy bear, “He’s a guardian.”

“Bella?” Mary tilts her head, she looks confused, and the way her voice shifted up a bit is telling. “Why do you want to give Art away?”

“I’m not.” Bella said, “He says that he’s supposed to protect people from the Shadowman. The Shadowman can’t get me anymore thanks to Uncle Sammy, but he still scares Mr. Jack.” She raises the bear a bit more. She’s completely unaware of the tension that’s crept into the adults. “He wants to protect you because you’re the last person the Shadowman scares.” Bella squirms out of Sammy’s arms and jumps to the floor and offers the bear one more time, “Let Art help you.”

Jack nods, because it’s the only thing to do right now, He takes the little bear and hugs it to show her he’s thankful, and then sets it in their cart where a child would sit. “Thank you, Bella. That’s really nice of you.”

Mary opens and shuts her mouth a couple of times. Sammy looks just as shocked. Mary’s son, Andy looks up at her and says, “Mommy, I need to use the bathroom.”

“Yeah, hun.” Marry says, looking down, “Let’s go over there.” She pats Jack’s shoulder one more time, “It’s good meeting you, Jack.” Then she turns to Sammy, “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

“Yeah.” Sammy smiles at her, “I’ll try not to.”

“You’re not on your honeymoon. Yet.” She smiles, though, with what her daughter just said, it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She takes her kids with her up the aisle, and waves before turning the corner.

“That was-” Sammy begins to say.

“Interesting.” Jack glances at the teddy bear.

“This is the second bear you’ve received as a gift,” Sammy says, smiling.

“Shut up,” Jack says.  

He doesn’t want to think about what one of his exes once did, and he doesn’t really want to think about the strange little girl knowing that he still has nightmares about a dark figure.

He really doesn’t want to think about how Sammy lit up when he saw that little girl either. Jack had wanted kids before everything happened. He was sure Sammy didn’t want them, and he’d decided that he wasn’t going to fight on that one. Now that he’d gone through hell, now that he knew exactly what could happen to a person in this world, he didn’t want to get attached to more things that he needed to. Seeing Sammy hold a child like that, though, lighting up like a thousand suns. He wondered if Sammy had wanted kids before everything happened. It might have been one of those many things they still hadn’t talked about. He wondered if it was one of the things Sammy had purposefully kept buried because he always thought he didn’t deserve anything in this world.

Jack twists the ring he is currently wearing on his right hand. The one Sammy had given him. He’d chosen not to put it on his left until they actually said their vows. He thought about their future and everything they still hadn’t talked about.

“Something wrong?” Sammy nudged Jack.

“Hmm?” Jack turns a little, Sammy had noticed he was starting to wander back into his head. He wondered how long he’d been there this time before Sammy had noticed.

“What are you thinking about?” Sammy asks.

“Mmmm.” Jack rolls his head from side to side, trying to decide if he should say it, “Do you want kids?”

“Oh.” Sammy says, “ _Oh_.”

“Y-yeah.” Jack tries to calm himself down. He didn’t expect to ever have this conversation. Not here. Not in King Falls. Not in the cereal aisle of a grocery store. Not after that place. It doesn’t help that Sammy is suddenly the patient one. The one whose eyes are now filled with some sort of wisdom Jack wishes he had. He really doesn’t want to see Sammy’s face while he processes the question, but there isn’t a hint at what he’s thinking.

Sammy finally clears his throat, “I don’t know if I want to adopt or not, but Ben is already a handful.” Sammy laughs a little at his own joke, “Do you still want them, Jack?”

“You knew I wanted kids?” Jack asks.

“Yeah.” Sammy steps closer to jack, and he lets his voice get softer, “I think you almost screamed ‘I want a baby’ at me during that first fight we had at our house in Seattle. You always wanted them, and I would have adopted as many kids as you wanted. I can’t tell if you still want them, though, and you just used the past tense.” Sammy takes Jacks hand and he rubs his thumb in circles. Jack has to take a minute to stop thinking about anything and calm down.

He wants to just say no. He wants to just tell Sammy he doesn’t want anyone else to suffer like he did. How he doesn’t want to get attached to anyone who isn’t family already. He just wants Sammy and Lily. He could make an acception and add Ben and Emily to the list of people he can care about, for Sammy’s sake and not his.

He also knows, logically, that any kid they adopt would be part of this world and could just as easily be hurt whether or not they raise them. He just wishes he never knew how horrible things could be.

“I don’t know if I want children anymore,” Jack says. He didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes. When he opens them, and he’s much closer to Sammy than he thought he had been. Did he step forward or did Sammy?

“That’s okay,” Sammy says, his voice is still so soft. He squeezes Jack’s hand, “Plenty of time to figure it out. Together.”

It would have been a perfect moment, and it probably was, but the teddy bear fell down in the cart, making a thud. Its eyes were turned downward.

“Look.” Sammy jokes, “It’s giving us privacy.”

Jack rolls his eyes, “You don’t believe that thing actually talked to Bella right?”

“This is King Falls.” Sammy shrugs, “It wouldn’t be the first sentient stuffed toy I’ve me.”

“What?”

“Just-” Sammy says. He’s smiling, “You’ll have to talk to Ben. It’s a long story and he tells it better.”

“I’m sure,” Jack says.

“I can’t believe you’re the skeptic now.” Sammy smiles.

Jack just rolls his eyes and starts pushing the cart.

They finish shopping and head back to the apartment. When they got to the car, Jack kept the bear with him, sitting on his lap, the whole ride home.

 

It’s late that night when Jack shoots up in the bed. He’s gasping for air and shaking. Sammy gets up and walks out of the room, and for a moment Jack thinks it’s because he can’t handle him anymore. For a moment he just thinks that Sammy can’t deal with him, but then he comes back with the teddy bear that Jack had left on the couch.

“Good luck charm, maybe?” Sammy says as he hands it over to him.

Jack just holds it for a moment, and looks down at it, before turning it around and laying down again with Sammy, “Okay.”

He doesn’t know why he feels peaceful now. Why he’s able to drift off to sleep, he’s not entirely sure.

When Sammy crawls out of bed just after 1 am, Jack wakes up and realizes he hasn’t had another nightmare. He hasn't dreamt of being pulled away into the darkness or dreamt of waking up alone in that place again. He has had his first night of restful sleep since he’d come back.

That wasn’t exactly true. The hospital had him on morphine for a few days, it had helped, but he hadn’t wanted to keep using it.

Sammy leans over and kisses him when he notices Jack’s awake too. “Did he protect you?” Sammy nods to the bear Jack still has his arms wrapped around.

“I think so.” Jack whispers, “How’d you know it would help?”

“Remember what I told you when I gave you this?” Sammy taps on the ring on Jack’s finger. It’s an almost forgotten memory from that time before. The weeks leading up to his disappearance were foggy, but that was right at the edge of it all.

It had been late in the night, outside a 24-hour-diner where they used to get coffee, sitting in a parked car, a light drizzle coating the car. The engine was off but the radio was still on, an old NPR rerun playing instead of music. Sammy had pulled his mother's wedding band off his finger and held it out to Jack.

It was a simple question, no long speech, no crying, no grand gesture outside of how sure he was when he said those four words. “Will you marry me?”

Jack had said yes and had taken no time at all to put the ring on, admiring it. He hadn’t know where it had come from that moment, but her remembered Sammy explaining it. It had been his mother's wedding band. It was supposed to be good luck.

“I didn’t know you believed in luck.” Jack had joked because Sammy was famously skeptic about anything that wasn’t a scientific fact. Bigfoot, aliens, ghosts (apparitions Jack now corrected), they were all things that Sammy was sure didn’t exist back then. Luck should have been on that list.

“There are two things I believe in,” Sammy said softly in that car.

Now, in the present, Jack said softly, “You believe in Love and Luck.” He squeezed the teddy bear slightly. Sammy had called it a good luck charm. He held up the hand with the ring on it, “I think you used all the luck on this ring.”

Sammy laughs, “Yeah? I think you just got all the bad luck in one go.”

“How come when you had it, you got to meet me, and be a shock jock, and get nationally syndicated on the radio, and the second you gave it to me all the bad stuff happened? It’s bad luck.” Jack nudges Sammy and smiles. Because this is the most joking he’s done about that place. He’s been too afraid of it to think of it, let alone laugh at it.

“If you want to give it back, you can,” Sammy says. “I never said it had to be that ring.”

“I’m keeping the cursed ring,” Jack says. He pulls his hand away from Sammy who’s already trying to take the ring from him. It’s teasing, of course, and it’s so nice to be able to do this again.

The second alarm goes off on Sammy’s phone. A soft buzzing melody that doesn’t wake Jack up, but is enough to make Sammy perk up. “Looks Like I have to head up the mountain.” Sammy leans close and pecks Jack on the cheek. “You want me to bring the radio in here or are you going to migrate to the couch?”

Jack fights a yawn, “In here, please.”

Sammy kisses Jack again before going to get the radio. He puts it on the nightstand on Jack’s side of the bed. “I love you.” He says, leaning down to press one last kiss onto Jack’s forehead.

Jack doesn’t complain about all the kisses, because it’s part of that different Sammy that he clings to. The one so unlike what Sammy was before that it could only be the real Sammy. He holds the teddy bear tighter and doesn’t realize he’s sleeping until Sammy wakes him up by crawling into bed with him when there’s light outside the window.

“I missed the show.” Jack murmurs.

“It’s okay.” Sammy kisses Jack’s shoulders. “There will be more.”

“I love how you kiss me,” Jack says.

“I love kissing you,” Sammy says, and he presses one more kiss to Jack’s shoulders.


End file.
